Confining Toronto marathons to Parks?

Just one day after the Toronto Waterfront marathon Rob Ford, a candidate for mayor of Toronto, suggested he would contemplate banning marathons from city streets while confining them to areas like High Park or Downsview. If you want to read more about, yumke over at A whole lot of soles has more on the story.

I am not sure how serious Ford is but the idea does not make a lot of sense to me. It seems like a case of a politician throwing a random promise out there in an effort to earn a few more votes. Clearly he has not considered the economic benefits of having some of the world’s top distance runners racing in his city or the many runners who travelled to Toronto from out of town to participate in one of the weekend’s races.

Somehow I can’t see this plan ever coming to fruition. What do you think of the idea? I wouldn’t mind running one of the Toronto marathons in the future but I would not travel to Toronto just to run 42 km around Downsview.